User Anonymous

Ellie Groenendyk

Ellie is responsible for offline marketing and promotion at the Atlantis Project. She earned her degree in Spanish from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA.

What is your favorite travel memory?

As an undergrad, I studied abroad in Seville, Spain. Every day I walked over the Rio Guadalquivir on my way to school and saw people kayaking and rowing on the river. I eventually found out that competitive rowers and canoers came from northern Europe during the winter to train on our river.

This inspired me to join a "club de piraguismo", or a kayaking club. We had classes 4 times a week for a few hours in the afternoon. This was one of the best things for my Spanish, and I got to experience Seville in a truly unique way while forming friendships with people that had lived there their whole lives. This experience is definitely one of my favorite memories from my time abroad.

What is the best story you've heard from a return student?

We had a student who, unknown to staff in the United States, got published while on our program. She worked to translate a research paper while fulfilling all of her other program responsibilities and is listed as an author of the paper.

This was a unique opportunity she had to use her relationship with the doctors as well as her Spanish-speaking abilities to help further their research and to get published in a medical research paper at the same time.

If you could go on any program that your company offers, which one would you choose and why?

I would really love to go to one of the smaller Spanish cities like Alcazar de San Juan because it'd be such a culturally rich environment and I would really get to know the town that I was in. Our program logistics look pretty much the same in all of our locations, I would love to spend my week shadowing doctors in a foreign hospital, but I would have to choose a city like Alcazar because of the unique character the city has.

What do you believe to be the biggest factor in being a successful company?

I think the biggest factor in being a successful company is for the organization to have good leadership. At The Atlantis Project, this definitely sets us apart.

Our leadership sets a standard of hard work, good decision-making, and effective communication.

This allows for success of our organization and gives us opportunity to grow as we look to the future.

Shadow doctors 20+ hours/week in Europe or Latin America through the Atlantis Fellowship: 1.5-8 week Fellowships during winter or summer breaks. Atlantis (formerly known as the Atlantis Project) has been providing university students in healthcare-related fields with the opportunity to gain clinical...